


The Light in the Darkness

by MelyndaR, ozhawk



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-17
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-04-15 05:46:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 20,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4595202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MelyndaR/pseuds/MelyndaR, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozhawk/pseuds/ozhawk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's only a few things Bucky knows without question: He would kill or die for Beth, he's going to kill Brock Rumlow or die trying... and he's really, really bad at relationships these days - a real shame, since he just met his soulmate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Soulmate Shorts AKA The Crackship Armada](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2658407) by [ozhawk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozhawk/pseuds/ozhawk). 



> This story is a continuation of the Bucky/Beth the Waitress one-shot in ozhawk's "Soulmate Shorts AKA Crackship Armada," chapter 130, "A Really Long Story." If you haven't read any of the one-shots or continuations that followed some of the one-shots, I would encourage you to do so; they're absolutely awesome! Anyway, I wrote this prologue, but the next two chapters will be ozhawk's work, and then it looks like you guys are going to be stuck with my writing again. Enjoy!

**Chapter 1: Prologue**

The memories came back slowly at first, bit by bit, like a window that had shattered and whose pieces were now being haphazardly reconnected to form an uncertain mosaic; not the same as before – different, broken, but maybe, eventually, salvageable. At first he had only what he'd been told by the man on the bridge and his own vague belief that he might once have been more ( _or was it "less"_ ) than the Asset. He had been told that somehow, somewhere, he had once been a man named James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky. That much he had been told by the one mark he'd ever failed to kill. Then the memories started to return, and with them the affirmation that the man on the bridge knew what he was talking about – knew  _Bucky_.

The first time something came back to him, a flash of a memory echoed in his mind while he was sleeping on a park bench underneath what passed for the stars in this city that preferred artificial lights.

_A woman – his ma, his dream filled in – calling to him, "James, dinner!"_

_"Comin', Ma!"_

The next night it happened again and he saw – no, remembered…

_Some scrawny blonde kid that his first teacher had made him share a desk and a primer with, announcing in a tone that was far too brassy to be wise coming from such a tiny kid, "You're name's too fancy. I'm gonna call you 'Bucky'."_

He'd woken up with a jolt, sweating and unable to sleep for the rest of the night, but knowing one thing for certain… knowing one thing for  _himself._ He hadn't always been the Asset. He  _was_ Bucky. But  _who_ was Bucky?

At least the memories kept coming, pieces filling in, a legendary ghost story shrunk down to moments and memories, likes and dislikes, a life that had been lived and then harshly cut off and warped into something ugly, and unrecognizable, and unforgivable.

_The mark's name was Steve, not The Man on the Bridge._

No, he was so much more than that. He was Bucky's platonic soulmate.

_Nine-year-old Steve chasing Robby Dexter all the way to the alley behind the movie theater for pushing Molly Walsh off the swings, and Robby Dexter beating him up for it. Bucky made sure to peel the two of them apart and ensure that Robby knew not to come near his Stevie again._

_The same ally, the same old Steve, in another fight over ten years later, and of course Bucky cleans up Steve's mess for him… but maybe this is the last time, because he has a uniform on and draft papers in his back pocket. He's young and scared and he doesn't want to fight – he never has, really; fighting is just something he_ does  _because he must. But Steve doesn't see any of this, ever, and Bucky doesn't tell him because the little punk looks downright_ envious  _at the moment and he just wouldn't understand this, doesn't get that Bucky wasn't as good as him even way back then. So Bucky pastes on a smile, slings an arm around Steve's shoulders and drags him to a science fair, telling himself that everything will turn out okay in the end, that at least Steve has no choice but to stay safe here in New York, right?_

_Steve finding him in that hole in the ground where HYDRA's already run experiments on him and put things into his flesh and blood, but again Steve doesn't notice and Bucky doesn't tell him because, honestly, he's much more concerned about what's been put into Steve, what Erskine's serum and this awful war has turned him into._

Night after night and sometimes in broad daylight these things flashed back into his remembrance.

_"Let's hear it for Captain America!" and Bucky claps, but he frowns when no one is looking, because already he realizes that no one would applaud if he'd called him "Steve" and he hates that._

_Nights spent in enemy territory with the Howling Commandoes without even the comfort of firelight because they don't want to risk an enemy seeing it. Still Dum Dum talks as loud as any of them dare, Frenchie and Gabe bicker back and forth in French, Morita and Monty start up a game of cards and Bucky coaxes Steve into joining in the game because he just wants his best friend to remember to_ breathe  _for a second._

_Then he and Steve are on a train, clinging to its side, and he's reaching for Steve's hand, only he doesn't reach far enough in time and he falls, screaming, into the snowy abyss below, alive, if just barely, when he slips into merciful unconsciousness._

After that, there were no more good memories. But there were still memories, and they kept coming, though he hated every one of them more than the last. Metal, orders, bone, blood, death, "wipe him," cryo, repeat. For how many years, Bucky wasn't even sure at first. Then there was the man on the bridge, and for the first time HYDRA's orders were disobeyed, and even without knowing who he was – who either one of them were, really – Bucky had dragged him out of that water and saved Steve one more time. Before he ran from him. Because he knew even in the midst of his confusion that whatever he had become, it wasn't this man's – Steve's – fault; it was something that he had to figure out and deal with himself.  _Right?_

But recently he'd realized something else: As his platonic soulmate, Steve would be going nuts because he didn't know that Bucky was okay. Sure, Bucky wasn't dumb enough to think that he was  _actually_ okay, but he wanted Steve to think that he was. How to get that knowledge to him, though? He now knew for a fact that Steve would be able to see through him if Bucky showed up in person, and he just wasn't ready for that.

A proxy. He needed a messenger to send to Steve. But who? Someone Steve trusted was the best idea, of course, but Bucky hadn't really seen Steve anywhere around New York City, not by himself, let alone with anyone… which meant that he was going to have to work backwards from where he  _knew_ Steve was. He could trail him from Avengers Tower – not that he had a better way to spend his days, really – until he saw Steve with someone he trusted who lived outside of the Tower.

So that's what he did. It was harder than he had expected it to be to, following Steve without making himself known, and it wasn't because of lack of skill on his part. He  _could_ expertly conceal himself in a crowd so that no one ever noticed him, let alone the fact that he was tailing an Avenger, there were just moment when he didn't  _want_ to. There were moments when he just wanted to be able to unload everything on his soulmate and go to him for help, but he also knew that he wasn't ready for that. He felt there was still too much healing that he had to do by himself first.

So it was a small mercy that he only had to follow Steve for three days before he established one consistency in his daily routine that would fit Bucky's exact needs. He went to a little café every day, sitting at the same table… and talking to the same pretty blonde waitress.

In her Bucky had found his unwitting messenger, now he just had to get up the courage to actually give her his message.

* * *

HYDRA was not to be trusted. The former HYDRA operative strolling casually along the sidewalk had learned that the hard way. Where now he blended in, becoming an invisible, unnoticed part of the crowd, he had once been high up in HYDRA's ranks. One downed Triskelion and a few profile-altering scars later and they had just assumed he was dead. They knew he'd been enhanced, and therefore that there was a possibility he'd survived, but they hadn't come looking for him. So he'd turned his back on them and started up his own unofficial group of ex-HYDRA mercs, but that didn't mean he'd forgotten HYDRA.

He hadn't, and he really thought that it was time for them to learn that he'd survived – to learn how he felt about their treatment of him. As small a group as he was leading though, he wasn't stupid enough to think that he could put a dent in HYDRA… but he knew of someone – practically  _something_ – who could.

He'd been the Asset's handler more than anyone else during his years with HYDRA, and he'd heard that the Asset had escaped HYDRA, gone rogue in a sense, on his own when his memories started to come back. Presently, that could turn into a disadvantage, or, depending on what angle he decided to pursue, work to his advantage. It was a disadvantage because Sergeant Barnes emerging where he wanted the Asset would make him harder to track down. He'd figure out that he was being chased and run like a bat out of hell because he was remembering that he had something to fight for.

Unless that "something to fight for" was used against him. The moment he had Sergeant Barnes in hearing range, he could use a trigger word on him to get him to revert back to the Asset, but kidnapping Rogers to draw him out was going to be just as impossible as kidnapping the Asset, maybe more so. But there was an avenue that he could take to make that happen too. Trailing Rogers until he found someone outside of the Tower to draw Rogers out, kidnapping that person and then Rogers, and thereby drawing Barnes out… It was a ridiculously complicated idea, but it was the only one Brock Rumlow had, and if it worked, anything would be more than worth it to get his hands back on the perfected mercenary that was the Asset.

Rumlow and the Asset could make a real name for themselves as a mercenary duo for hire… but first he had a point to make with HYDRA, and he knew who he wanted as his messenger.

So he managed to personally trail Rogers for a few days, going completely undetected and quickly noticing someone who should work as bait for Captain America. It wasn't in the nature of America's first hero to let a civilian die because of him – certainly not if the civilian was the pretty blonde waitress that he chatted with every day. With that thought in mind, it didn't take long for Rumlow to craft his plan and gather the rest of his ex-HYDRA crew to help him put it in action.


	2. Soulmate Short – A Really Long Story

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I mentioned in the last chapter, this is the original Bucky/Beth the Waitress one-shot that ozhawk wrote, chapter 130 of "Soulmate Shorts AKA Crackship Armada."

**Chapter 2: Soulmate Short – A Really Long Story**

"See ya tomorrow, Steve," Beth sang out cheerfully as she saw Steve get up from his usual table, folding his newspaper. He blushed slightly, as he always did, and waved. She thought occasionally about asking him out for a coffee date – goodness knew he was her type, tall and muscular, but – well, she liked her men with a bit more of an edge to them. She sighed, clearing Steve's coffee cup and pocketing the folded twenty-dollar bill he'd left under it with a smile. Always the same. A twenty-buck tip for a six-dollar coffee. Such a sweet guy.

She wiped the table down and looked around. Her section was empty, and her shift was over, so she headed inside and took off her apron, cheerfully farewelling her co-workers. It was a beautiful spring day and the sun was shining; she decided to walk home instead of taking the bus.

Beth was only five blocks from home when she began to get the oddest sensation that she was being followed. She looked all around but couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. There were plenty of people about and it was broad daylight too; she didn't feel too worried. She wasn't even carrying a bag, wasn't much of a target for a mugging.

Arriving back at her building, she made her way up the stairs, fishing her key out of her pocket. She was already regretting her decision to walk home; her feet were aching. Well, perhaps she could put them up for a few hours before she headed out for her evening classes. Waitress by day, nursing student by night, that was Beth's life.

On the way home after class, Beth began to get the feeling that she was being followed again. What hadn't bothered her by day took on an entirely different feeling at night and she found herself looking around nervously, hurrying her steps home from the bus stop.

There was a homeless guy sitting on the steps of her building. She'd seen him around a bit lately, and while she'd never spoken to him she'd smiled at him once and he'd actually smiled back, the expression turning his stubbled face to one of handsomeness. Beth raced up the steps past him, digging frantically in her pocket for her key, oh where was the damned thing?

"Are you all right, ma'am?" came a low voice. She froze, looking down at the homeless guy wide-eyed. Surely not. Oh, that would be just my luck. Homeless dude. Fantastic.

"I think I might be being followed," Beth blurted, throwing caution to the winds. Watching for his reaction. But instead of a start or a wide-eyed stare, he moved smoothly to his feet and down the steps, looking down the street.

"Huh. You're right. Get inside." And just like that, he was gone, off down the street in a dead run – and quicker by far than your average starving homeless dude. Beth stood staring after him for a moment, mouth open with shock, before coming back to herself and scrabbling for her key again. She still hadn't found it when he returned.

"HYDRA," he said crisply, "we're going to have to go."

"I – what? HYDRA, the Nazi terrorist group?"

"Yup," he took her hand, quite firmly, and pulled her down the steps after him. "Come on, Beth. Time to go. I dealt with that one, but there'll be more of them coming."

"But… how do you know my name?"

He paused, cursed under his breath. "You know Stevie. I was – getting up the courage to ask you to give him a message from me."

"Stevie who?" she said plaintively, utterly lost now. "I don't understand. Why would HYDRA be after me… oh my God." She put it together suddenly. HYDRA and Steve Rogers.

"You're his friend, and about the only one of those who's vulnerable. The rest of them live in Avengers Tower or are SHIELD agents. But you, you're an easy target, Beth."

"I – we're not exactly close!" she was letting him pull her along the street, walking quickly. "Why would anyone come after me to get to him? And wait, how do I know you're not HYDRA?"

He stopped, turned to her suddenly, and she found herself staring up into eyes that were incredibly blue, beneath the streetlight they were standing under. "Do you think you could be soulmates with someone who was HYDRA, Beth?"

Staring up into his eyes, she could only shake her head. "You – are?"

"You said my words, and judging from your reaction when I asked if you were all right, I said yours. Now's not a real auspicious time to be comparing handwriting, though."

The shocks were coming a bit too thick and fast for Beth, but she nodded bravely. He was quite right. "Where are we going? And – what's your name?"

He hesitated a moment. "Call me Bucky. And as for where we're going," he made a face. "I'm afraid we've no real choice. Not if I'm going to keep you safe from HYDRA."

"So – where?"

For answer, he pointed wordlessly up into the sky.

"Oh, no," Beth said, looking at the massive A.

"I'm not all that keen on the idea myself," Bucky said wryly, "but I'm not entirely sure that I can keep you safe without help. And I'm not willing to risk you, Beth."

She melted a little bit at the soft note in his voice then, and let him pull her onwards again. He drew her in close to his side, put his arm around her, his hand closing gently on her shoulder.

"If I tell you to run," he said quietly, "you run like hell and don't stop until you're inside the Tower, all right? Tell them Bucky sent you. That you're my soulmate."

"What…" Beth started, but then there was the screech of brakes behind them and Bucky pushed her forward.

"Run, Beth!"

The command in his voice was so powerful she was running before she even thought about it. And she didn't look back, she was only two blocks from the Tower and there was help there, surely…

She was intercepted even as she pelted in through the doors, her hair askew, sweating and panting.

"Now now, miss," a tall, heavily built man intercepted her. "What seems to be the problem?"

"I need to see Steve Rogers," Beth panted frantically. She didn't miss the not at all discreet eye-roll that statement bought her. "My name's Beth, he's a friend of mine, Bucky's my soulmate, tell him Bucky needs help!" She ran out of breath and collapsed to lean against a marble column.

"Did you say Bucky?" the man said, staring.

"Yes! Please, just call Steve!"

A siren suddenly started wailing. Beth flinched, eyes going wide with panic, her eyes going to the doors – but there was nobody there.

"I took the liberty of transmitting our guest's information to Mr Rogers and Mr Stark," a disembodied English voice said.

"What the hell?" Beth looked around frantically.

"That's JARVIS. He's the AI that runs the Tower." The man surveyed her critically. "Well,apparently somebody thinks what you have to say is important enough to set off the Assemble alarm."

"The what?" Beth thought vaguely that she really needed to stop saying what? But then it would also be really nice if her life stopped being totally insane today, thanks very much.

"Here they come now…"

Elevator doors pinged open and all of a sudden Beth was surrounded by costumed superheroes. The only reason she didn't scream her head off was because Steve was there, in his full Captain America paraphernalia, but she'd seen him that way before. She put her hands on the rim of his shield and looked up into his eyes.

"HYDRA came to try and grab me, to get to you because we're friends. Bucky stopped them. He's my soulmate. There's more of them out there…"

Steve's jaw actually dropped. And then he was bolting out the Tower doors.

"Safe room," a solidly built man with a bow in his hand shouted over his shoulder before racing out the door after Steve and the others.

"Come on then, miss. I'm Happy, we'd better get you secured…"

By now utterly bemused, as well as quite frightened, Beth followed docilely. The elevator took them downwards and within minutes they were indeed in a safe room, quite a comfortable one. Happy stayed with her, trying to talk to her, but she was in no mood for it, just paced up and down until the disembodied voice spoke again.

"The mission is completed; the Avengers are returning to the Tower. All HYDRA elements have been subdued."

"What about Bucky?" Beth demanded.

"Mr Barnes is returning to the Tower with the Avengers," JARVIS told her.

"His name is Bucky Barnes?" Beth blinked. "Huh. Must have been named after the wartime hero."

Happy was looking at her pityingly. He called up an image on a computer screen and turned the monitor to face her. "Is this the man?"

"Yes," she nodded, seeing the long dark hair, thick black stubble and piercingly blue eyes.

Happy tapped another key and the image was replaced by another, a young man in WWII-era military uniform.

"Wait," Beth leaned forward, staring disbelievingly. "That's not possible."

"Miss Beth, you're in Avengers Tower. Impossible is pretty much a daily event around here. You kinda get used to it. Eventually."

She was still staring at the monitor when Happy opened the safe room door to admit Bucky and Steve, walking side by side.

"Beth," Steve said, and then saw what she was looking at. "Ah. Yes. That."

She wheeled around, pointed a shaking finger at Bucky. "How. The. Fuck!"

"Ah," Bucky winced slightly, "that's a kinda long story, doll."

"And why the hell are you pretending to be a homeless hobo?"

"Well, technically, until about five minutes ago…" he grinned at her expression. "Really long story."

Steve was grinning as he watched the pair of them. Happy had discreetly slipped out. "Y'know," Steve said with a grin, "I always thought Beth was a sassy dame, Buck. Should have known she'd be a match for you."

They both turned and stared at him.

"Aaaaand I'll leave you alone. There's a guest apartment upstairs when you're ready. JARVIS will direct you." He backed hastily out and closed the door behind him.

"I am really officially done with today," Beth said, and to her horror she felt tears welling in her eyes. Bucky crossed the room to her in three giant strides, pulling her into his arms. And – why was one of them making strange squeaking and whining noises under the sleeve of his hoodie? She just wasn't ready to deal, and she found herself pressing her forehead against his shoulder as he held her close.

"It's all right, Beth," Bucky murmured softly. "Everything's going to be all right."


	3. Crackship Armada Sexytimes (abridged)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the other chapter that ozhawk wrote for Bucky/Beth - this one was chapter four of her "Crackship Armada Sexytimes." As it says below, I abridged it because I prefer to keep my stories T-rated or less, but if you like M-rated then go check out "Crackship Armada Sexytimes" and the rest of this chapter in all it's glory if you haven't already! Enjoy!

**Chapter 3: Crackship Armada Sexytimes _(abridged)_**

"Everything's going to be all right," Bucky murmured softly in Beth's ear, and she took a deep breath, trying to regain her composure.

And gagged.

"Oh my God, you stink!"

"Homeless hobo…" he said with a grin, releasing her and stepping back. "Like you said."

"I want a shower." Beth tried to wrap herself in the familiar, everyday aspects of bodily needs. "And so do you. About three showers, probably. I want to go home."

"Beth," he reached towards her, let his hand drop. "You can't go back to your apartment."

"Why not? You dealt with the problem, didn't you?" her brow furrowed.

"Yes, tonight's problem. But – we also made it worse. Bad enough that HYDRA realised you were close enough to Steve to be used against him. Now they know you're important enough for the Avengers to Assemble for you. And at least a couple of the guys we fought tonight were wearing cameras, which means their bosses now know I went out to fight for you too." Bucky shook his head. "Clint and Nat are checking your apartment now. HYDRA had two men inside waiting for you as well, they must have gotten there before I did."

In the flight-induced rush of adrenaline, Beth hadn't really thought about it, but now that she did, she asked in a small voice;

"What would they have done to me?"

"Don't!" Bucky said sharply, unable to deal with the thought. "Don't think about that, Beth. They didn't get you. I wouldn't have let them touch you, I'll never let them near you." This time he did touch her, his hand gentle against her cheek. "I'll never let anybody hurt you," he said, his voice a husky whisper.

They stood staring at each other in silence for a long moment, and then Bucky dropped his hand. "Stevie said somethin' about a guest room. Let's go check it out, get cleaned up." He rubbed ruefully at his bearded chin. "There might even be a razor there."

Beth smiled, and took the hand he offered, leading her out of the safe room and to the waiting elevator. There were no buttons – she wouldn't have known what floor to press anyway – so she cleared her throat. "JARVIS?" she said nervously.

"Yes, Miss Jackson," the urbane voice of the AI replied immediately, "may I convey you to the guest suite prepared for you and Mr Barnes?"

Suite sounded good. Like there were probably at least two bedrooms. Beth nodded, wondered if she should speak aloud, but the elevator doors were sliding soundlessly closed.

"Please turn right on exiting the elevator," JARVIS informed then when the doors opened again, "and proceed along the corridor until you find an open door."

Bucky instinctively pushed Beth behind him, moving to check the room despite her dry remark of;

"I seriously don't think there's going to be anyone waiting to ambush us in Avengers Tower, Bucky!"

There was no ambush – but there was a dark-haired woman there, placing two piles of folded clothes on the couch. Spotting Bucky coming in, his stance wary, hand inside his hoodie, she lifted her hands, spreading them out to her side and turning around slowly, her form-fitting clothes showing that she wasn't armed.

"I'm Maria Hill, Barnes. I used to be SHIELD and I work for Stark now. I was just dropping off some clean clothes and stuff for you and Beth. Hi, Beth," she said with a smile and a nod as Beth peeped around the doorframe behind Bucky.

"Oh, hello!" the beautiful brunette had come for coffee with Steve a couple of times. "I've seen her with Steve, Bucky," Beth reassured, reaching to put a hand on his arm. His left arm, which felt strangely hard under his hoodie. She looked at his hand, puzzled, but he was wearing a leather glove on it. He pulled away, nodded shortly at Maria.

The other woman left, with a quiet murmur of "Just ask JARVIS if you need anything else," and Bucky secured the doors before going quickly around the rest of the suite. There were two bedrooms, each with an ensuite bathroom, plus the shared living room and kitchen.

Everything looked very expensive, Beth couldn't help but think, looking around. Even the clothes Maria had left weren't cheap, Juicy Couture sweats for her and a Polo Ralph Lauren polo and jeans for Bucky. Gathering her pile, she headed for the bedroom she'd picked out – they were both the same.

"Good night, Beth," Bucky said quietly behind her. She paused, glanced over her shoulder – but the other bedroom door had already closed.

She'd kind of thought that they might talk some more once they'd both cleaned up and changed. It was a long day, she should be exhausted, but she suspected it would be a long time before the adrenaline charge in her system faded enough for her to sleep. With a sigh, Beth closed her bedroom door too.

Stocked with enough luxury products to launch a beauty salon, it was the nicest bathroom she'd ever been in. Eyeing the huge tub, Beth shrugged mentally. What the hell. She couldn't remember the last time she'd had a proper bath, the shower stall in her apartment wasn't even big enough for her to wash her hair without bashing her elbows. She turned the faucet, smiling as a steaming river of water began pouring into the tub, investigated the box of assorted bath bombs on a shelf by the tub before selecting one and tossing it in.

She luxuriated in the tub for a long time, feeling the hot water soak away stiff muscles, before finally climbing reluctantly out and drying herself. Feeling suddenly hungry, she decided to go and investigate if there was anything in the fridge. Tugging on the sweats, she headed back to the living room.

And froze, two steps outside her bedroom door. Because Bucky was there, in the kitchen, obviously with the same idea as she'd had, because he was just opening the fridge door.

He was wearing only the jeans Maria had left for him, clinging lovingly to his ass and powerful thighs, but Beth barely noticed them, her eyes landing instantly on the metal arm, the incredibly complex and obviously completely functional metal arm with a red star painted on the shoulder of the darkly gleaming metal. It seemed to be part of his body, grafted on, ridged white scarring where it met flesh speaking silently of trauma and horrible pain.

"Beth," Bucky said awkwardly, cursing himself for not putting his hoodie and glove back on, but he'd been hot after his shower, and the apartment felt warm too. He hadn't wanted her to see this yet. Maybe not ever. It was hideous, ghastly…

"Oh, Bucky," Beth was crossing the room to him swiftly, her fingers coming up to ghost lightly over his scarred chest. "My Bucky, my poor darling – what did they do to you?" Her huge blue eyes swam with tears as she looked up at him, and once again Bucky found himself utterly helpless against her.

"It's all right, Beth," he said huskily. "It was a long time ago. I lost my left arm in a fall from a train, I should have died, don't know how I survived long enough for HYDRA to find me. But I've had this arm for a long, long time, got used to it – in some ways it's better than the original, stronger. It's been improved over the years, I even have feeling in it, though it's different to my real hand."

"Can I – touch?" she asked shyly, her fingers hovering near his biceps.

"Sure." The touch receptors in the arm were mainly on the fingers and hand, but there were a few scattered around his arm, and her delicate fingers brushed directly over one as she touched his arm.

No one but maintenance techs had ever touched Bucky's arm, and their touch was firm, impersonal, if not actually rough because it was a machine, didn't need gentleness. Beth touched him as though she was afraid the vibranium alloy would shatter beneath her fingers, and to Bucky it felt like crackling fire racing along his nerves. He shuddered, his other arm moving instinctively to wrap around Beth, gather her close to him.

"I'm sorry!" Beth gasped, pulling her hand back as he shuddered beneath her touch.

"Don't – it feels good, Beth, no one ever touched me like that," his blue eyes blazed as he looked down at her, pupils blown wide.

He'd shaved clean, his longish hair damp and tucked behind his ears, leaving the clean-cut beauty of his face entirely exposed, and in that face Beth could see the handsome young soldier from the pictures she'd seen, though he was leaner now, his cheeks a little hollowed, only emphasising the sharp lines of his spectacular cheekbones. Wonderingly she reached up and touched his face, tracing her fingers down his jaw.

"Beth," he said hoarsely, and her eyes fastened on his mouth, plush pink lips, the most succulent mouth she'd ever seen on a man. Unconsciously she licked her own lips, and Bucky, far too long denied any kind of touch that wasn't brutality, lost his mind.

He was kissing her, his mouth hot and hungry over hers, his tongue flicking her lips apart and playing with hers, leaning into her and bending her back over his arm. Beth moaned with pleasure as he plundered her mouth, tasting, licking and sucking at her lower lip.

She was too small, a good six inches shorter than he was, and Bucky didn't think twice – he barely thought once – before lifting her hips and setting her on the kitchen counter, placing her at a much more convenient height. Beth parted her knees and bracketed his hips, her hands around his neck pulling him in for more kisses, and Bucky was only too happy to oblige.


	4. Right Now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm baaaack! This is my writing again, and - as is pretty well par the course with me I'm afraid - this one is a shorter chapter. But what can I say? I try to go where my muse takes me, but I still prefer my T-ratings, so this happened. Enjoy!

**Chapter 4: Right Now**

Later, Beth came out of her bathroom and into the living room to find Bucky sprawled across the length of the couch. She smiled at the sight of him and padded across the plush carpet on bare feet, murmuring, "Hey."

"Hey," he repeated just as softly, curling his flesh arm around her waist when she laid down on the couch, ending up as much on top of him as she was beside him.

A smile tipped at the corners of her mouth as she danced her fingertips along his metal arm again, hoping to get the same reaction as she had before.

He grabbed her hand to still the movement even as a shudder coursed through him, and she craned her neck to look at his face, his image practically upside down from where her head was resting on his chest. "Not yet," he muttered with a smirk before saying seriously, "We have to talk."

"Right now?"

A ghost of a smile touched one corner of his mouth at her impatience as he insisted, "Right now. Beth… those HYDRA men…" he tried to sort through what he was thinking and ended up apparently failing when he sighed and said softly, "Stevie said that this can be more than a guest suite. It's technically  _his_ guest suite – all five levels that the Avengers live on has one, he said – and he wants us to have it. He wants this to be  _our_ suite, for us to live here. What do you think?"

"Wait," she raised an eyebrow as she popped up on one elbow to look at him properly. "You're not okay with round two of sex, but you already want to discuss moving in together?"

He sighed again, and it struck her how out of touch he must still be with people, how out of practice he had to be with conversing… how hard he was trying to make some point. "Beth, I already told you that you can't go back to your apartment, and I don't mean just temporarily. Someone who could and would hurt you knows where you live if you stay there. That's not okay. I'm sorry, but you have to move regardless, and… yeah, the selfish –  _really_ selfish – part of me wants it into be here with me. Or at least into the Tower." He took a deep breath and met her eyes, obviously hating to have to tell her what he was currently saying, "Until this threat is eradicated, I don't know that you're going to be safe, and that's not a risk I'm willing to take."

His words dropped the temperature in the room by at least twenty degrees and Beth shivered. Bucky saw and pulled her back down to him, kissing the top of her head and murmuring another apology against her hair. "It's okay," she said softly, even though it wasn't, not really.

It wasn't that she minded the idea of moving in with her soulmate, or into this gorgeous apartment, but the necessity of the move, the circumstances around it… she was lying to say that didn't bother her. Wouldn't it bother anyone to think that someone was coming after them like that?

"I'll move in here," she agreed.

"Thank you," Bucky answered, the relief palpable in his voice.

Beth propped herself back up, a gleam coming into her eye as she bargained, "Make it up to me?"

Bucky eyed her warily for a second, pulling her down for a long kiss before he asked against her lips, "How?"

"Bond with me?"

The words were out of her mouth before she'd even registered them, and, yes, she was aware of the fact that's she was trying to use sex to distract herself from everything else that had happened and was still going on… but she couldn't say that she didn't like the idea. Still, she hadn't expected her soulmate to  _blanch_.

He tensed underneath her before he said, "You know how, in the kitchen, I told you that I'd never be able to deny you anything?" Regret filled his eyes again as he said, "I'm going to prove myself wrong now. You don't deserve to be bonded to me, sweetheart. My mind is not something I want you to see. My emotions – which bonding would completely key you into –" he let out a bitter bark of a laugh. "No, we can't bond right now. You just don't deserve that. I'm a mess right now, and I don't want to inflict that mess on you. There are things going on with me that I'm not ready to inflict on  _anyone_. There's a reason I was going to use you as a messenger to tell Steve I was alright."

"Why?" Beth asked, trying to absorb the informational dump.

Bucky smiled sadly. "Because he would've seen straight through the words if I'd said them to his face."

She felt a momentary flare of jealousy for Steve, who obviously knew Bucky inside and out, even though there was no special way of connecting between platonic soulmates like there was between romantic ones. Steve had told her even before he knew Bucky was still alive that the two men were platonic soulmates, but that little prod of jealously was due to more than that. Steve had actually had Bucky in his life and gotten to know him naturally. The more she heard of, and from, Bucky, though, the harder it sounded like it would be for her to get to do that with him now, and he'd just refused her the one way she  _knew_ she could learn what was going on inside his head. She wanted to be able to judge what he was thinking, either by a connected bond or him simply letting her in to get to know him, and she was impatient for it.

Impatient… and irrational and tired. Steve had known Bucky for over half their lives before World War II; Beth could believe that her own connection with Bucky like that –  _better_ than that – would come in time. For right now she  _could_ tell that it would be best to take it slowly with her soulmate though… and she knew herself well enough to know that with the state she was in right now, this wasn't a conversation that she was going to be able to have rationally until she got a good night's sleep.

Though quite honestly, with her hands lazily drawing patterns on Bucky's chest and his hands resting lightly on her hips she was beginning to think that maybe she didn't care if she got that good night's sleep  _this_ night…

So she asked him for the one thing she couldn't see him denying her, "Can you just promise me that we will bond at some point? I'll promise that I won't push you for it, if you promise that it will happen once you're ready."

"When I'm better, of course," Bucky answered, and her heart broke for him at his wording even as that ghost of a smirk curved his mouth and he squeezed her lightly where her soulmark was. "In the meantime…" he gripped her hips again and somehow managed to flip them on the couch, so that he was looming over her, taking up her entire field of vision, their faces close enough that his hair was a curtain from the rest of the world. "There's a hundred other positions we could try out."

Well, how in the world was she supposed to think about anything  _but_ that?! "I guess we'd better get started," she declared, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him down to close the distance between them in a heated kiss that quickly became something more for the second time that night.

That, apparently, was something that he was all too willing to give her, and she couldn't bring herself to be bothered by  _anything_ right then.


	5. Darcy

**Chapter 5: Darcy**

“Miss Jackson? Sergeant Barnes?”

Bucky nearly flew out of his own skin when he woke to the disembodied voice coming into the room seemingly from everywhere and nowhere all at once. _JARVIS_ , he remembered Ms. – Agent? – Hill had called…it… last night. Whatever it was, he didn’t like it.

He liked it even less when the voice declared, “I’m afraid you have a visitor.”

“What?” Beth mumbled against Bucky’s chest – he must’ve woken her up when he startled, and now he wrapped his flesh arm around her waist.

Bucky called out awkwardly, uncertain of how to handle something that was apparently just a… voice, let alone if he would get an answer, “What visitor?”

“Captain Rogers would like to give you both a tour of the Tower.”

Beth nearly fell off of him and the couch as she jerked quickly upright, yelping, “Steve?!” as she looked in horror at the state that she and Bucky had left the living room in before eventually giving in and catching a few hours’ sleep. She scrambled to her feet and started snatching her clothes from where they’d been discarded on the floor, and Bucky watched her, trying to decide whether he wanted to be irritated at Steve or amused by Beth as he stood up much more slowly. “What time is it?!”

“Seven-thirty-one a.m.,” JARVIS answered.

Bucky groused, “Then tell Steve that he can wait a damned minute for us to get dressed and come back at eight.”

No, he couldn’t really imagine speaking to anyone else that way – not anymore, anyway – but Steve was still the same old Stevie, right? No, probably not, he realized nervously – after all, he was certainly different than the Bucky that Steve remembered. He opened his mouth to tell JARVIS to reword that, but before he could, the British-accented voice asked dryly, “Would you like me to relay that verbatim?”

 _No!_ But before Bucky could answer, Beth did, snapping, “Yes!”

“Yes, ma’am,” JARVIS answered, and then he said no more.

“Why verbatim?” Bucky asked her in surprise as he scooped up his own discarded jeans.

Beth raised her eyebrows as she turned to him, answering, “Because he recently married his own soulmate; he _knows_ what he’s doing!”

Bucky smirked, thinking that maybe there was a chance Steve _was_ still the same old Stevie, before he asked, “What’s his wife’s name?”

“Don’t know,” Beth replied. “He’s mentioned recently that he got married a little over a year ago, and I would assume that she lives here in the Tower. It must have been very quiet and private or it would have been all over the news.”

“You wanna meet her?” Bucky asked, grabbing Beth’s arm to pull her to him. She had obviously been woken as abruptly as he had, and if she wasn’t so much shorter than him, her irritation might’ve been intimidating. As it was, he thought she was cuter than ever when she was so indignant. “The only other woman I’ve heard of living here is Natasha, so I’d wager Stevie’s soulmate has to be an interesting woman.”

“Friendliness in a bit,” Beth decided. “Shower first.”

Bucky nodded in agreement and when she went to pull away and head towards her bathroom, he tugged her back to him and kissed her, trying to calm her as he said, apparently much happier than he had in a while, “Hey, good morning, sweetheart.”

She smiled and melted against him – mission accomplished, then – as she kissed him again and repeated, “Good morning, darling.”

Half an hour later, the duo was looking much more presentable as they were leaving their suite with Steve explaining JARVIS’s function in the Tower to them. “Basically, he runs the whole Tower. Anything you want, JARVIS can get for you,” he informed them as Beth and Bucky trailed him across the hall and into Steve’s kitchen, where he’d insisted on starting their tour.

“I’d kill for an espresso on the rocks right now,” a new voice declared suddenly as its owner made her way into the room.

“Is that some sort of liquor?” Bucky asked hesitantly.

“Something even more powerful than liquor,” Beth informed him with a smile. “Coffee. Presumably iced, if it’s supposed to be ‘on the rocks’.” She turned to the bedraggled woman in glasses who’d come in, offering with a teasing smile, “I’d help you wrangle your victims if it means I get a share of your espresso.”

The coffee cup the woman had just grabbed slipped from her hand to clatter to the counter, thankfully without breaking, as she turned towards Beth, her eyes wide and mouth agape. She glanced between Steve and Bucky before managing an articulate, “Um... hi.” The woman blinked, seeming to reclaim her senses a bit before she offered, “I’m Darcy Lewis, Steve’s wife.”

“Beth Jackson,” Beth grinned, the first time she’d ever really considered the words that she was about to say. “I’m Bucky’s soulmate.”

Darcy scooped her mug back up, saying, “I really don’t wanna overwhelm you, and I know that can happen pretty easily around here, particularly with how Steve said last night was for you, but you, um…”

“Yeah,” Beth’s grin widened. “You said mine too.”

Bucky and Steve both started to look entirely confused as Darcy shoved up the sleeve covering her left arm and showed Beth the silver words wrapped around her upper arm just below her shoulder.

“Oh, lord!” Beth giggled, rolling up the sleeve on her right arm to show Darcy her own silver words. “You must think I’m nuts!”

“You have to be at least a little nuts somehow,” Darcy confirmed happily. “Considering that you’re my platonic soulmate.”

Steve laughed nervously, murmuring “oh boy” under his breath as he backed a step away from the two of them, taking Bucky with him.

Darcy cracked up laughing as she looked over Beth’s shoulder at him. “Captain America’s afraid of us, Beth!”

Beth grinned mischievously, turning to look at hers’ and Darcy’s soulmates as she said, “He’s a smart man for that, I think.”

“So, can I finish taking you on the rest of your tour of the Tower?” Darcy asked Beth, finally getting around to pouring herself a cup of coffee and then handing a second one to Beth. “Jane’s going to be thrilled to know that we have a fifth woman in the Tower. I might even be able to get her out of the labs for a girls’ night this weekend so that we can get to know you!” Before Beth could even answer Darcy’s question, the other woman was looping arms with her and pulling her into the elevator while she chattered all the while. “Oh, and I have to introduce you to Pepper! Hey, did you mean what you said about helping me wrangle people? Because my specialty is scientist wrangling and if you could help me do some of the _superhero_ wrangling, I would love you for forever… although apparently I’m going to do that anyway, I guess, because, you know, platonic soulmates… Oh, gosh, I’m rambling _way_ too much right now!”

Darcy slammed her mouth shut as Beth burst into a fit of giggles and patted her arm. “It’s okay, I don’t mind the rambling. You’re being informative.”

“You mean you kept up with all that?” Darcy asked, raising her eyebrows and looking impressed.

“Ah… Tour, Jane, girls’ night, Pepper, superhero wrangling, platonic soulmates. Did I get that all right?”

“Yeah,” Darcy nodded, knocking her left shoulder against Beth’s right so that their soulmarks brushed. “Good job! So, how many of the Tower residents have you actually met?”

“Um… just Steve – unless a man named Happy lives here too?”

“Nope. He refused to be put himself in a position where he has to put up with their – our? I’m not really sure anymore – crazy 24/7.”

“Just Steve, then,” Beth repeated. “And, as of last night, Bucky, of course.”

“In that case, our first stop is Natasha!” Darcy declared jubilantly. “J, you got that?”

“Agent Romanoff is currently in the gym, Miss Lewis. I’m taking you there now.”

“Thanks!” Darcy turned her attention back to Beth, continuing her informative monologue. “Natasha and Clint are soulmates.”

“Am I allowed to know who they are in the Avengers?” Beth asked. “The only way I know any of them is through their codenames.”

There had been a massive information dump on the internet a few months ago, but, unlike some people, Beth hadn’t looked into the information that had shown up before it had once again been deleted from the public eye. She’s long known that Steve was Captain America, but she also knew how closely he guarded that secret, and she’d wanted to respect that in both his life and those of his teammates.

“Well, yeah, you get to know! You live in the same wing of the Tower as them now, don’t you?” Darcy asked. “Natasha Romanoff is, of course, the only female Avenger, the Black Widow. Clint Barton is Hawkeye.”

“I wondered about that,” Beth admitted thoughtfully. “They always seem to be seen together in the video footage I’ve seen.”

Darcy waggled her eyebrows with a grin. “And now you know why.”

“What about you?” Beth asked as the two women stepped off of the elevator and into the biggest gym that she had ever seen. “How did you end up…” she waved her hand to encompass all that she couldn’t quite find a way to categorize aloud. “Getting involved in all of this?”

Darcy chuckled ruefully, declaring, “Six college credits. I became Dr. Jane Foster’s intern to earn six college credits, and then Jane found out that she was Thor’s soulmate. There was the Battle of Manhattan – I’ve heard that was a fun day-“

“Yeah, not so much,” Beth broke in, cocking her head to the side with a rueful smile of her own.

“And then Tony built Avengers’ Tower, the Avengers moved in with their soulmates – at the time that included Jane and Pepper. I came along, discovered I was Steve’s soulmate, and the rest is history so far as I know it. Well… there is what happened with SHIELD and the Winter Soldier and all that, but that is a story for probably another day, and, honestly, _definitely_ from another person.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I saw a comment on the original short suggesting adding a Beth/Darcy platonic soulmates pairing should this story ever be continued, and since I'm continuing it, I decided to throw that suggestion into the story and see what happened. I'll admit that I am a little nervous about it, though, just because I'm never really sure if I get Darcy right or not, but I'm giving it my best shot, and, like I said, we'll see what happens.


	6. Past and Present

**Chapter 6: Past and Present**

"But we're platonic soulmates," Beth pointed out to Darcy. "Who could be better to tell me that story?"

"Bucky's your romantic soulmate; he might know some of it. Plus Natasha and Steve were actually there. I wasn't. Speaking of which…" Darcy raised her voice and called out across the huge room, "Natasha!"

A lithe redhead whipped around towards them from where she had been going a round in the boxing ring with her own soulmate. Clint took the opportunity to try and pounce on her, but Natasha easily slid between the ropes with a smirk and just left him hanging as she made her way towards Beth and Darcy. "Morning," she said, swiping a bottle of water from the mini-fridge by the door and guzzling it. "Beth, how are you doing?"

Beth smiled, although the action was a little more difficult than she had anticipated, as she answered, "Good. I've found both of my soulmates in the past twenty-four hours."

"JARVIS sent a group update to the Avengers' suites about Sergeant Barnes. Do you have a platonic soulmate, I guess, or a third between you and Barnes?"

"A platonic soulmate," Bath replied.

Darcy rose up happily on her toes with a gleeful smile, declaring, "And it's me!"

Natasha arched one begrudgingly amused eyebrow at Darcy before she said, all faux sincerity, to Beth, "I am so sorry. What did you do to tick off fate?"

"Natasha!" Darcy objected loudly.

"I'm sorry; that wasn't funny," Natasha told Beth, her expression twitching like she couldn't decide whether or not she meant it. "I can't speak much for Barnes, but Darcy's great. She even manages to do a good job of keeping the Avengers sane."

Beth's smile weakened suddenly as she thought of how much she could use a dose of sanity in her life at the moment. She had met her soulmate, yes, and that was a good thing, but it had been under some pretty difficult circumstances. It wasn't that she was ungrateful or even necessarily unhappy or unexcited, but she just needed… a second to breathe and  _absorb the changes_.

Then she caught a nuance in what Natasha had said and decided to ask for what she was pretty sure could cause even more upset. "You said you 'can't speak  _much_  for' Bucky. Does that mean that you can say  _something_ for him?"

Nothing in Natasha changed, body language or expression, but Clint started towards them and Beth recognized a soulbond at work – if Natasha  _was_ upset, that was. "For him? Not necessarily. Of him, though…"

"Nat?" Clint murmured, his hand dropping onto her shoulder in a simple display of support.

Foreboding crept into Beth's mind as she asked, "What is it? What, what sort of part did Bucky play in, uh, SHIELD falling?"

"Bucky?" Something flitted through Natasha's eyes before she answered calmly, "The only part Sergeant Barnes played in any of it was dragging Steve out of the water."

Beth remembered then that she was talking to an expert manipulator; if she wanted answers, she had to pay close attention to wording too, probably. "What about…" she shrugged, hesitating on the title, "The Winter Soldier?"

"The only thing I think you need to know and understand about the Winter Soldier, judging by what Steve has recently told us, is that he was a puppet. It wasn't  _him_ doing those things; it was HYDRA  _through_ him."

"You really believe that?" Beth asked, torn between simple curiosity and something worse.

Natasha didn't even bat an eyelash as she answered, "Yes."

"How can you be sure?" she asked, not sure where the questions were coming from or why she needed the answers, just that she was dying to understand  _something_ in this strange new environment she'd been thrown into.

Here the redhead paused and Clint squeezed her shoulder lightly as she remarked, "Been there, done that."

Beth suddenly wished she'd looked into that informational dump. Something told her that she'd be a lot less confused right now if she had. But she still believed that these people deserved their privacy, didn't she? Yes, she was being impatient, and her desire to regain some control after last night was manifesting itself in a desire for information, but they  _all_ deserved to get to know one another naturally. So there would be no internet scrounging or forcing people into conversations they didn't want on her account.

Her decision made, difficult though it was for her, she merely studied Natasha for a second before she gave her a small smile and promised, "Okay, I believe you."

Natasha nodded, looking slightly grateful that she hadn't been asked to elaborate. Beth returned the gesture, satisfied that she'd done the right thing.

Patience, she was realizing already was going to be necessary here – be it with Bucky, this sudden move into Avengers' Tower, or a lot of other things. Patience wasn't her strong suit by any means, but for her friends and soulmate she could and would do it. Starting now, by leaving Natasha to hers and Clint's training.

She turned to Darcy and asked, "Do you mind if we go catch back up with Bucky and Steve?"

Darcy chuckled, mouthing "lovebirds" at Clint and Natasha before she followed Beth into the elevator.

* * *

When the elevator doors closed behind Beth and Darcy in Steve and Darcy's suit, Bucky turned to Steve, sulking a little as he complained, "She's mine, though."

Steve grinned, clapping Bucky on the back as he answered, "Darcy's too, apparently, just like you're mine."

"Don't remind me," Bucky teased dryly, ducking away from the touch.

Steve studied him shrewdly, sliding onto a barstool and becoming serious as he asked, "So, old friend that I know so well, what's wrong?"

Bucky snorted, "You don't know me anymore, Stevie."

"So you're completely fine?" Steve shrugged far too casually. "Nothing in particular bothering you?"

"Depending on the moment,  _anything_ could bother me, Steve," he replied irritably.

Steve folded his hands on the countertop, leaning towards Bucky as he got to his point, "You met your  _soulmate_ not twenty-four hours ago, but the moment the girls left the room, you let your mask slip and you looked _un_ happy, so there's got to be something  _huge_ weighing on your mind right now.  _Talk_ to me, Bucky!"

Bucky stared at him for a long second before he let out a breath that he belatedly realized he'd been holding since seeing who had come after Beth the night before. "Last night, HYDRA came after Beth."

"Yeah, but we took care of those guys."

"We did," Bucky nodded. "Those guys. But right now I'm worried more about who  _wasn't_ with those guys."

"What do you mean?"

"I've been  _tracking_ HYDRA movements as best as I can the more my memory returns. The guys that we killed last night… they were technically already dead."

"I'm…" Steve shook his head. "Not following."

"All of them were some of the HYDRA people who were in the Triskelion when it fell. Both the remnants of SHIELD and, if I'm correct, HYDRA wrote them off as dead."

"There weren't that many of them last night, Bucky," Steve said calmly. "And regardless, they  _are_  dead now."

"Yeah – all but one of them. One of them wasn't there last night, and I  _know_ he survived the Triskelion's fall. In fact, I'd wager that he was that little faction's leader before we axed them all, so he's probably mad, especially since we didn't give him whatever it is that he wanted."

"I need you to slow down, Buck. Slow down  _a lot_  and tell me who you think wants Beth."

Bucky took a deep breath and answered the question he'd been asked. "Brock Rumlow."

* * *

Brock Rumlow was not a happy man. He'd had barely a dozen men to send for Beth –  _one civilian woman_ – and for some reason he'd thought it a good idea to send them all. He hadn't counted on his people encountering the Asset, let alone on the Avengers getting involved, and now all of his allies were dead. Perfect. Now once he had the Asset – and he  _would_ – they really would be only a two-man act.

The only good thing last night's fiasco had gotten him was a little tidbit of useful information. For some reason, Beth Jackson wasn't just the key to Captain Rogers; she was a direct route to drawing Barnes out too.

Now he knew. He'd tried, he'd failed, he'd learned. Last night's attempted kidnapping had been sloppy, overconfident even. That wouldn't happen again. He was a one-man army now, so he would have to be more careful, more patient when he went in for round two. For now, it was back to the drawing board, and he would not accept failure a second time.


	7. Truth and Secrets

**Chapter 7: Truth and Secrets**

Bucky was startled by how quickly that name got Steve's attention. "I take it you know him?" he asked his platonic soulmate with a wry smirk.

"Yeah," Steve answered solemnly. "Personally. Why do you think he survived and what do you think he wants with Beth?"

"I don't  _think_  he survived, Steve," Bucky objected. "I  _know_ , and I know because I remember hearing while I was in HYDRA that he had been enhanced with some version of your serum… technically it sounded like they gave him a lot of the same crap they pumped into me. Not all of the same stuff, of course," Bucky continued with a wry smirk. "Because he wasn't their invaluable  _Asset_ , but he's definitely not dead. I've seen the man in action, and he's not going to go out that easily."

"An entire Triskelion falling in around him isn't enough to kill him?!" Steve asked skeptically.

"No," Bucky answered simply. "You don't get what I'm telling you, Steve. Rumlow… he's  _me_! He'd ruthless and veritably unstoppable, and, given the chance, he  _will_ kill  _anyone_ who gets in his path, whether it's me, you… or even Beth."

"Then he's not you," Steve said softly.

Bucky caught his snort just before he let it out, looking away from Steve before he declared, "You're missing my point."

"No, I'm not," Steve replied calmly. "He's dangerous, and he wants Beth. However, you didn't answer my second question.  _Why_ does he want her? To get to me?"

Bucky pursed his lips, muttering, "Or me."

"Don't take this the wrong way, but why would he want you?"

Bucky laughed bitterly, murmuring, "It is way too early in the morning for this conversation."

"Bucky?"

"He's my handler, all right!" Bucky snapped, whipping back around towards Steve as all of the worst of his memories started to filter back to him. For the first time in months, he hadn't dreamed last night while Beth slept by him, but he was making up for it now by being made to discuss these things aloud. "HYDRA gave him orders and he gave them to me, and I was his good little attack dog who obeyed his every word, and with the  _right_ words he can drag me right back there! There are code words that he can use to turn me into a  _machine_ again, and he knows  _everyone_. Somehow he was trailing me, and he wants  _me_ , and he will  _kill Beth_ to get to me without even blinking! I can't let that happen, Steve!"

"And it  _won't_ ," Steve said earnestly. "Bucky… I'll look into it, okay? I will. But I need you to stay away from it."

"What?!" Bucky howled, only taking a calming breath when he noticed that the gears in his arm were whirring, tightening to strike out or crush a windpipe. Steve took a half-step back before he could catch himself, and, seeing the reaction, Bucky reeled himself back in before he demanded in a carefully measured tone, "Why?"

"Two reasons. Like you said yourself, it could be a danger to you if you got near Rumlow. Secondly, you just met your soulmate, and contrary to popular belief a good, solid relationship between soulmates doesn't just  _happen_. Being soulmates is a guarantee that it will happen  _if_ you work at it. Perfect compatibility doesn't guarantee an automatically perfect relationship. If you throw yourself so far into finding Rumlow – which you will because I do know that you're a very determined soldier – that you start to sideline Beth, especially now in the beginning of your relationship, you're both going to be hurt because of it."

Bucky glowered. "I thought you didn't know anything about women."

"Darcy's been a crash course over the past couple of years," Steve chuckled.

"See, you've changed too!"

"Don't change the subject, Buck."

Bucky rolled his eyes in irritation at being caught and admitted, "Fine, you've got a point."

"So you're going to forget about Rumlow and trust me to take care of him while you concentrate on Beth?"

"You're going to take this Rumlow angle seriously?"

"Beth is like a sister to me; I don't want to see either of you get hurt. Yes, I'll take care of it."

"I'm trusting you with a lot, Steve," Bucky reminded, and then he froze, repeating quietly in stunned disbelief, "I'm trusting you."

Steve's smile was a melancholy one, like he could tell why the realization gave Bucky pause, as he replied, "And I won't misuse that trust. Beth is safe here – and so are you – and I'll do everything I know how to make sure that it stays that way. I promise."

Bucky stared at Steve for a second before deciding he was sincere. He nodded and there was a quiet, thoughtful moment before Steve smirked and Bucky asked him, "What?"

Steve smiled outright as he remarked, "I don't even know who to give a shovel talk to out of the two of you."

Of all the times that Beth and Darcy could've returned, Bucky was glad they came in then and on nothing truly serious like his and Steve's previous conversation about Rumlow. Beth laughed, teasing Steve, "Aw, I didn't realize you liked me that much!"

"Of course I do; you're practically my baby sister!"

Beth witheringly  _glared_ , and Bucky's eyebrow twitched as he asked on a hunch, "Do you have siblings?"

"Do you?" his soulmate asked curiously.

"I have –" he winced. "Had a sister. Rebecca." He didn't add the "I think" that came to his mind, the fact that he still wasn't  _sure_ about some of the most basic parts of his life, his past.

Beth reached for his flesh hand and squeezed it gently, offering comfort and support without making a big deal about it, all of which he was more than grateful for as she rolled her eyes and admitted in half-hearted exasperation, "I have  _three_ older brothers back in Kansas."

Steve added gleefully, "And  _four_ right here in the Tower."

"Four?" Beth repeated, glancing uncertainly between Steve and Darcy.

"Sorry, but he's right," Darcy admitted with a shrug. "Tony, Bruce, Clint –"

"-And me-"

Darcy sent her soulmate a  _look_ before she continued, "Are all probably going to adopt you as a baby sister. Or the team mascot. I speak from personal experience."

Both girls shuddered dramatically before Darcy added, "Just be glad that Thor and Jane are on Asgard for now; he's the most protective big brother of the lot of them."

Bucky couldn't help his amused snort at their combined antics. Beth turned to him, grinning at his happiness as she remarked with false woe, "At least I got you from out of all this mess."

She wasn't really teasing, despite her expression, Bucky realized. There was too much truth in her words for that. He pulled her to him, gently tucking her head underneath his chin as he replied, "You did." He caught Steve's eye, and though Darcy caught the men's unspoken conversation, she didn't comment when Bucky muttered, "I promise."

"Can I ask a random question?" Darcy queried.

Steve teased her asking, "Don't you usually?"

She stuck her tongue out at him with an insincere glare.

"I love you," Steve cooed, wrapping an arm around her shoulders as he tried to get himself out of trouble.

"You'd better!" she shot back, poking him in the stomach before she continued with what had originally been on her mind by asking, "How do we feel about throwing a party? Just an evening of pizza, cookies, and convo for the Tower residents? It's not like we don't have more than enough things happening that are worth celebrating!"

She looked indicatively at Bucky and Beth, but it wasn't until Steve's gaze swung questioningly to his that Bucky had to fight the urge to curl into himself. Darcy was accepting him, she wanted to do something nice for him and Beth, and he should be grateful for all of that. But, honestly, the idea of being in a room with that many strangers at once made him uneasy. They would all probably want to talk to him, get to know him, and he just wasn't ready for that.

"You know," Beth spoke up. "I don't know that that's practical right now. I'd rather get settled in our own suite as soon as possible, get a sense of normalcy and 'home', you know?"

Bucky tightened his grip on her waist gratefully and forced down the relieved sigh that threatened to spill from his lips. A small smile flickered on her face – acknowledgement that she understood the thanks he meant to convey?

Darcy replied with a small pout, "I get wanting to feel at home, but are you sure you can't spare even  _one_ evening?"

"I'm sure," Beth insisted not unkindly. "I'd much rather get to know them naturally anyway."

"And that's okay," Steve spoke up. "Some people just prefer to ease into things."

Darcy dropped the idea easily enough then, instead informing the guys, "The only place we went was down to the gym. We talked to Clint and Natasha for a minute."

"Have you two met Tony yet?" Steve inquired.

Bucky shook his head. "Never officially."

"You want to?"

Bucky winced when Darcy scoffed, "You're against a party, but you think it's a good idea to make Tony his introduction to the Avengers?"

"I have my reasons, sweetheart," Steve answered casually, but Bucky noticed the slight tightening at the corners of his mouth, the frown that Darcy shot him, like Steve had just sent her  _something_ through their bond. "It's technically Tony's tower; I think he deserves to know who's living in it."

"Okay," Darcy said mildly. "But I'm introducing Beth to Bruce first."

"That would be perfect," Steve smiled, and then the four of them headed into the elevator.


	8. A Little Progress

**Chapter 8: A Little Progress**

If Bucky had thought the rest of the Tower was high-tech, he was completely unprepared for what met him when the four stepped out of the elevator and into the labs. Retractable sliding glass walls separated the gigantic room into four sections. One section was sealed off, classical music seeping out from the space where a bespectacled man was working. The other three sections were opened to each other, making a much larger workspace from which horrible, screeching, yelling sounds were blaring.

"What is that?!" Bucky demanded, resisting the urge to cover his ears.

Darcy rolled her eyes. "AC/DC, courtesy of Tony Stark. You two go have fun with him," she linked arms with Beth with a grin. "We're going to go talk to the sane Science!person."

Steve shook his head with an amused smile, watching them go before he called out, "JARVIS, turn off Tony's… noise."

Instantly the "AC/DC" stopped and Tony Stark popped up from underneath the car he'd been working on. His eyes scanned the lab until he found Steve and Bucky and waved them forward, a glass door automatically sliding open so they could go in.

"Cap, Barnes," he greeted, cleaning off the wrench he had in his hand. "You have something important enough to stop my music over?"

"Possibly," Steve answered. "Tony's our tech genius, Buck. He's the one who invented JARVIS. If Rumlow is out there, he can find him."

"'Rumlow'?" Stark repeated.

At the same time, Bucky muttered, "Are you sure we can trust him with this?"

"We don't have much of a choice it we want Rumlow to be found."

"He's not going to be able to find him anyway," Bucky realized. "Not if he doesn't want to be found."

"For your information, I've hacked into SHIELD before; I can find one man," Tony objected. "The question is – why do I need to?"

Bucky frowned, keeping his opinion to himself as he let Steve explain the situation to Stark as it had been explained to him. Yet he somehow already knew that it would do no good. Unless Bucky went out there and hunted Rumlow himself – which he couldn't do, no matter how much he wanted to – they didn't really have a choice but to wait for him to reveal himself.

Much as he hated it, he couldn't change that fact. So what  _could_  he do? He could take all possible precautions, but otherwise, like Steve had suggested… now was the time for him to concentrate on his soulmate – his beautiful Beth – for as long as he could before Rumlow popped up and tried again to get what he wanted. But where exactly was he supposed to start in building a relationship with Beth? He could already check sex off of their list, and he'd meant it when he'd said he didn't think it was kind to her for them to bond right now. He wasn't good at things as simple as conversation, either… so where did they start, then?

Like a lightbulb flipping on over his head, it hit him. Beth had already mentioned what she wanted to do! She wanted to get settled here in the Tower, to make their suit start to feel like their home.

He certainly thought that was an interesting idea. The last home he'd had was a tiny apartment in 1940s Brooklyn, and now… now Beth was his home, he realized. Beth and Steve, who were both going to live in the Tower, so he would live here too. And somehow, with their help, he'd try to make it feel like home.

Something told him Beth would like that, and if she was happy… well, then Bucky liked that.

He wasn't sure how long he and Steve stayed in there, Steve talking to Stark about Rumlow, just that the conversation stopped mid-sentence when Darcy rapped on the glass door.

"Let 'em in, J," Stark demanded, smiling at the two women with a startling nonchalance as they entered.

The billionaire was a really good liar, Bucky realized uneasily.

Beth came straight to him, wrapping her hands around his waist and standing on her tiptoes, chin tipped up expectantly. She huffed impatiently, informing him, "You have to lean down?"

"Why?"

She searched his eyes, trying to decipher if he was teasing or not, and he purposely kept his expression perfectly blank. Then he locked his metal arm around her waist and lifted her off of her feet, a smile ticking at the edges of his mouth – because apparently he wasn't such a bad liar himself if he could tease her when his thoughts were in such a whirl, "Better?"

She huffed again, though he didn't miss the relief in her eyes, and gave him a quick kiss, muttering with a grin, "Jerk."

"So I've been told."

Steve chuckled as she pointed out, "You can put me back down now."

"What if I don't wanna?"

"You're going to crush her ribcage," Darcy said.

He nearly dropped her at that, but instead Beth requested, "Stand me up on that workbench."

Bucky ignored Stark's squawk of protest in favor of obeying his soulmate.

"Turn around," she ordered with a grin.

He swallowed roughly, realizing what she intended to do, but did as asked. He winced against the instinct to buck her off when she climbed onto him piggyback style, instead locking his arms underneath her.

She kissed his cheek, declaring happily, "Now you can hold onto me as long as you like."

"Well," Stark addressed Beth dryly, "Now that you've stepped all over my stuff, I'm Tony Stark."

"Nice to meet you; I'm Beth Jackson."

"Be nice to her," Steve ordered Stark. "She's our new baby sister."

"And superhero babysitter," Darcy chimed in, ignoring the way Beth was glaring at Steve again.

"In that case, welcome to the Tower, and I apologize in advance for however Barton decides to initiate the newbie, but I'm afraid I have a car that needs some TLC, so… get out, all of you."

Darcy rolled her eyes and ordered Stark to "talk to us like you would if Pepper were here," but she led them back into the elevator anyway.

"What now?" Steve asked no one in particular.

Bucky muttered to the woman on his back, "You said you wanted to get settled in the suite, right? How would we go about doing that?"

"The waitress in me says by rearranging the kitchen to my tastes, but the whole suite is already furnished, so maybe I'll start with the living room instead."

"Do you like everything that's there?" Darcy asked her. "Because Tony's given me a full-access credit card for 'Tower expenses', the idiot genius, and you're totally free to customize your guys' space however you want. Everybody else did the same to their suites ages ago."

Bucky could hear the excitement in his soulmate's voice as she asked, "A limitless online shopping spree? Yes, please!"

Confused, he opened his mouth to ask for a… translation of that sentence but before he could, Steve laid a hand on his flesh arm and said with exaggeratedly large eyes, "Don't ask, Buck. Just…" a smirk twitched at Steve's mouth as he dramatically repeated, "Don't."

"You exaggerate," Darcy accused as they stepped off of the elevator.

Steve raised his eyebrows at her, declaring pointedly, "Ceramic horses."

That apparently meant something to Darcy, because she batted her eyelashes at Steve and said oh-so-innocently, "I thought Loki might use them to decorate his cell back on Asgard."

Again, that was a reference lost on Bucky – though he felt better when he realized that Beth, too, looked confused – as Steve merely shook his head, trying to fight the laugh that they all saw was under the surface. "One of these days you're going to suffer death via sarcasm-at-the-wrong-time, you do realize that, right?"

Bucky snorted before he could even begin to catch himself, declaring, "I think that America's image of their perfect Captain America has gone to your head a little. I don't just call you a punk for no good reason."

"Oh, I'm sure you don't," Darcy said with a grin. "But he likes pretending to be America's golden boy."

"Most days it's alright," Steve admitted. "It gives me a platform to use for things that I want to see changed in this world."

"Yes, but, see, Bucky and I?" Darcy continued. "We've seen you on the days when you  _do_ mind. Or," she glanced at Bucky, amending, "If you haven't yet, you will. For example, he has this really stupid habit of swearing when he gets fed up with the Captain America image, and I mean that he'll sit there and just roll out a random blue streak for no good reason, just because he can. 'I was a soldier in the US army, and Captain America be damned, I'm Steve Rogers and I don't have to say gosh if I don't want to.'"

Bucky and Darcy both rolled their eyes then, muttering at the same time, "Dramatic," and Beth chuckled in Bucky's ear.

"Great to know I'm loved," Steve said wryly.

"If I didn't love you, I wouldn't torment you," Darcy told him pertly.

"You know that's true for me too," Bucky drawled.

Still Steve shook his head, but there was sincerity in his eyes as he told Bucky, "It's good to have you back, jerk."

Bucky took a breath, looking at Steve and Darcy and feeling the weight of Beth's chin resting on his shoulder. There weren't many people here – or in the world in general – that he trusted, but there was now three more than there had been yesterday morning, and that was certainly progress. "I'm glad to be back, punk."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm giving you a heads up now, my flash-drive crashed a little over a week ago, and what I had written of chapter nine went with it, so I'm not sure when I'll get that re-written and posted. It could be a little while, so I'll apologize in advance just in case...


	9. A Gift for Beth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took me so long to get this to you guys, but here you go! Hopefully you enjoy!

**Chapter 9: A Gift for Beth**

The moment they stepped off of the elevator, Darcy and Beth hurried into Steve and Darcy's apartment, effectively shutting the door in Bucky's face, though he didn't know that either of them had even noticed. Standing to his right, Steve snorted when he saw the sulky expression that slipped onto Bucky's face at his unintended exclusion.

"Darcy's just excited at finding her other soulmate," Steve easily explained away.

"Well, so am I," Bucky muttered, though what he really wanted to do was whine – or break the door in and at least sit in on whatever shopping the girls were so intent on doing.

He wrinkled his nose at himself, half horrified to realize that he really was considering willingly putting up with shopping – online or not – and Steve cracked up at him all over again. "I know you're excited at finding your soulmate, Buck."

"Shut up, jerk," Bucky protested, launching an elbow at Steve, who dodged the blow only to sling an arm amicably around Bucky's shoulders with a chuckle. Now he really did whine when he pitifully said for the second time that morning, "She's mine…"

"So you've said," Steve nodded. "Darcy knows that, and so does Beth. Beth is your soulmate, Darcy is Beth's soulmate, I'm Darcy's soulmate, and you're my soulmate. It all goes around in a nice little square," Steve said cheerfully. "So the good news is that while Darcy and Beth are having their girl time, you get to spend time with me!" Now it was Bucky's turn to roll his eyes at Steve's dramatics, but Steve wasn't done just yet, demanding instead, "So, come on, think of something we can do together until Darcy gives you your Beth back."

Bucky still wasn't entirely satisfied with the arrangement, but he knew it would have to suffice until Beth and Darcy were ready to emerge back into civilization – which Steve didn't appear to think was going to be the case for quite a while. So he set his mind to coming up with something that he and Steve could do together, taking into account the unspoken fact that Steve wouldn't allow it to have anything to do with hunting for Rumlow. So if not Rumlow, he was back to Beth.

She'd said that she'd like to get settled into their suite, to start making it feel like their home, but Bucky had gone without a real home for so long that he wasn't sure how to start the task of carving one out. It wasn't like he would be any good at shopping for décor like Beth…

Then the idea hit him… because maybe there was something else he could find that would help this strange place feel more like a home for the both of them.

He turned to Steve, asking curiously, "How would you feel about going shopping, Stevie?"

* * *

Bucky wandered down the aisle behind Steve, looking at every option as he passed by it but discarding each one just as quickly. A couple yards ahead of him, Steve asked, "Hey, Buck, how about this one?"

Bucky stepped up to his friend's side, frowning a little as he shook his head. "No, that one's too big. I'm looking for a smaller one, I think," he hesitated before giving the example, "I want one that's small enough to be put in a purse or something."

Steve snorted, incredulously repeating, "A purse?"

"Yeah. Dames do that nowadays, don't they? Carry 'em around in purses?"

"Maybe some girls do," Steve allowed, still smiling at the admittedly ridiculous idea. "But I cannot for the life of me see Beth being one of those girls – and isn't this supposed to be a gift for Beth? Just a normal, everyday thing that normal people have to make her feel better about this whole mess?"

Bucky nodded his agreement. "And it's not like I think she's actually going to put it in her purse –" he shuddered suddenly as his imagination conjured up the idea of his being soulmate to a woman who might – "I just meant it as a sort of size comparison."

"I figured," Steve grinned, moving down to the next block in the animal shelter and pointing at the animal inside. "So not this one?"

Bucky glanced at the monstrous black Newfoundland inside and then scowled at Steve. "No way."

Steve kept right on grinning as Bucky moved past him and went on looking for a dog that was better suited to what he was looking for. He had moved into an entirely different row, leaving Steve lagging behind somewhere out of sight, when he found a dog whose name he couldn't help but do a double take over. Yes, he'd read that right. The information on the slip of paper pinned to the cage read:

Toto

Male Scottish Terrier

3 years old

Bucky looked down at the dog, only to find bright black eyes gazing adorably back up at him from underneath equally dark fur. "You, my friend, are not in Kansas anymore," he muttered. The dog's stub of a tail wagged as well as it could, and Bucky could've sworn Toto actually smiled at him as his ears cocked towards the sound of the super soldier's voice. "You know exactly what you're doing, don't you?" Bucky crouched down in front of the cage as he called, "Hey, Stevie, c'mere; I think I found the dog I want."

He poked his fingers through the wires of the cage to pet Toto and waited to hear Steve's approaching footsteps. Except… he didn't. After a couple minutes of growing increasingly anxious, Bucky stood up and moved on silent feet towards the aisle where he'd last seen Steve, mentally preparing himself for whatever worst case scenario he might find. What if HYDRA or Rumlow had gotten in here somehow, followed them from the Tower or something, and managed to take Steve down before Bucky had even known they were in the building? A well-aimed tranq dart or two would be all it could take to get Steve immobile, then a gun with a silencer on it that Bucky's own enhanced hearing might've missed since he was distracted. What if Steve's cooling body was right around the next cor-

He fought the urge to collapse with relief when Steve came into sight – perfectly fine, unaware of the way Bucky had worked himself into a frenzy, and talking quietly with a shelter worker in front of another dog cage.

Bucky walked up behind Steve and punched him on the arm – probably a little harder than was strictly necessary, but it made him feel better, anyway. "Hey, punk, I called for you. I think I found the right dog for Beth."

"Ah, sorry, Buck," Steve muttered, rubbing his shoulder. "I didn't hear you. We got distracted talking about this dog. Her name's Hannah. What do you think?"

Bucky glanced obligingly at the dog, registering only that she was a German shepherd – therefore much bigger than what he was looking for – before he declared, "Pretty dog, but too small for mine and Beth's apartment, I think. Now come look at Toto."

Steve put a hand on his shoulder before he could turn away and demanded softly, "Look closer."

So Bucky did, sighing as he gave his full attention to looking at Hannah. His first glance had been correct; she was a very pretty German shepherd with too much black fur for her markings to be considered traditional – but, upon taking this closer look, he got the feeling that her physique wasn't what had drawn Steve's attention. She was curled up in the farthest corner of her pen, having wedged herself between the wall and her doghouse to get as far away from them as possible, with her ears lowered in fear as she growled lowly at the three people watching her. He couldn't get a great look at her because of how she'd positioned herself, but he was pretty sure that he glimpsed only a stump where one of her back legs should have been.

"Steve," he said warningly. "You can't save everybody – or every animal."

"What about every veteran?" the blond man asked.

"What?"

"She was a war dog," the shelter worker explained. "She was shot, her leg couldn't be saved, so she was sent home an amputee and ended up here. She's really sweet once she gets comfortable, but no home has kept her long enough for that to happen, so she always ends up back here."

"Isn't it great how people treat veterans?" Steve muttered.

"Stevie…"

"It's okay, guys," the worker spoke up. "Toto's a great dog; you'll be lucky to have him."

Steve glanced back at Hannah and Bucky rubbed a hand over his eyes. "Listen, Steve, I know what you're thinking and – you know what? – I understand it, but we can't right now. We just can't. I refuse to spring two dogs on Beth, and you already mentioned on the way here that Darcy isn't fond of big breeds. It's not practical. Toto's an interesting character, and he's exactly what I'm looking for; Hannah will be fine."

Steve gave him a side-eye before silently relenting and letting Bucky lead the way back to Toto.


	10. Coming Back

**Chapter 10: Coming Back**

“Why do you never _turn on your phone_ , old man?” Darcy groused, shoving her cellphone back into her pocket. “I’m sure they’re fine, Beth,” she said certainly, flopping down onto the couch beside Beth. “Steve becomes a nostalgic old geezer and goes on random walks through Brooklyn sometimes. He probably just dragged Bucky out with him while we were shopping.” That said, she called out, “J, do you know where our guys are?”

“Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes are currently riding the elevator to this level of the Tower.”

Darcy nodded, springing up from the couch a she told Beth, “Then I will leave you to your soulmate. Personally, I may have a few words for mine.”

“Do think going out was unsafe for them?” Beth asked worriedly.

Darcy shook her head. “Not for those two. For us mere mortals? Yes. But they’re covered thanks to the super serum, and the way Steve tells the story they’d die for each other if trouble came up. They’re remarkably big boys these days; I think they can take care of themselves and each other. Granted, they can’t remember that this is actually the twenty-first century and these days we keep our phones on, but give them a bunch of Nazi terrorists and they’re good to go!”

Beth smiled and stood up from the couch, hugging Darcy at the door before she left. “Don’t be too hard on my big brother, okay? I’d guess he’s probably all sorts of absentminded thanks to having Bucky around again.”

“You’ve got that right,” Darcy chuckled, returning the hug with a smile. “I guess I’ll play nice enough.”

Darcy walked across the hall to hers and Steve’s apartment, and Beth didn’t even bother to shut the door to hers and Bucky’s place, seeing as he was probably going to be entering in under a minute. She still jumped when the door was closed while she had her back to it.

She whipped around where she was in the kitchen, planting her hands on the counter to save herself from tripping over her own feet at the movement and gasped, “Bucky! I didn’t even hear you come in!”

“Apparently I’m good at not being heard,” Bucky replied, taking another step forward. Beth closed the rest of the distance between them and he pulled her into his arms, confessing in an almost sulky voice, “I was beginning to wonder if I was ever going to get you back from Darcy.”

“I’ll always come back to you, silly man,” Beth promised, kissing him as she wound her arms around his neck. But then she couldn’t help adding, “As long as I know where you are, that is. After last night, Darcy and I got a little concerned when you and Steve both disappeared on us.”

“Aw, I’m sorry,” Bucky gave her another peck on the lips in apology. “I dragged Stevie out to get a surprise housewarming gift for you.”

She was instantly wary, asking, “Bucky Barnes, what did you do?”

“Why so nervous?” he asked with a breathtaking smile.

“Because I’ve heard tale that you and Steve can become a bit of a dastardly duo without a mother hen to watch over you.”

“ _I’m_ the mother hen out of our ‘dastardly duo’… so that I recall.” He frowned for a second, and at the look of uncertainty on his face Beth almost regretted bringing it up, but then the look was gone from his eyes and he winced, admitting, “Although this is going to be something that you either love or hate, I guess.”

“What _is_ it?” Beth asked again.

Bucky grinned a little impishly at her before turning his back to her and crouching down on the floor, tapping his thigh as he whistled, “Come here, boy!”

“Bucky…” Beth drawled hesitantly – as a black ball of fur darted into the room and jumped into her soulmate’s arms. She gaped, and when the fur-ball stilled in his arms, she saw it for the Scottie that it was.

Dog and man both looked up at her with equally wide puppy dog eyes – _Not. Fair. Bucky._ – as Bucky asked hopefully, “What do you think?”

Beth grinned, folding herself Indian-style onto the floor beside Bucky and running a hand through the dog’s silky fur. “He’s cute. What’s his name?”

“Toto,” Bucky replied, sounding like he was slowly relaxing. He was anxious, she realized. Giving her a gift – wanting her approval but risking not getting it _because getting a dog hadn’t been a direct order; it had been thinking for himself_ – had made him honest to goodness afraid. The thought made her want to cuddle him, not the dog, but it was Toto he was handing off to her as he said, “I thought the name fit for us – for you – since, you know, you’re… ‘not in Kansas anymore, Toto.’”

 “Bucky…” Beth said again, not sure what else _to_ say, she was thinking so many things at once. “Thank you,” she finally declared, hugging Toto. “He’s adorable.” She grinned at the super soldier asking curiously, “Why did you choose a dog, though?” Seeing the beginnings of a frown on his face, she hastened to add, “Only because I’m curious. I’m very happy with him, I just… want to get to know _you_ better.” Bucky ran his hand over Toto’s back, thinking harder than she thought would be necessary, before Beth tangled her fingers with his and asked, “Bucky?”

“I think I used to feed strays,” Bucky said, out of the blue. He wasn’t answering her question, Beth realized. _Was he remembering something new – sort of new – then?_ Unsure what else to do, she went stock-still, not wanting to disrupt him, and just listened. “Ma would get upset at me sometimes,” he recalled. “When she caught me saving bits from my plate. But there was just these couple of dogs – little ones like him –“ he gestured to Toto with his free hand. “Who would hang around our apartment building. “They were just so scrawny and sick-looking. Somebody had to take care of them, so I tried my best when I could.” Beth grinned, shaking her head in amusement as he snapped back to the present and looked at her. “What?” he asked, seeing her expression.

“Did you ever _not_ take care of ‘scrawny, sick-looking’ things?” she asked fondly.

He caught on immediately, back to the Bucky of the night before as he pointed out, “Stevie is not a thing… but, no, not really.  After meeting him, I guess I was hooked on it.”

She arched an eyebrow, asking, “Should I be concerned that _I’m_ blonde? Is that supposed to mean something here?”

“No,” he shook his head, running his thumb along her jaw as he leaned forward to kiss her. “It means that I think you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid my eyes on.”

She kissed him slowly, both of them taking their time after having been apart practically all day, but when they pulled apart, she teased, “Does that mean that you think Steve is beautiful?”

“In his own way, sure,” Bucky drawled before knowingly flipping the question back on her with a “Don’t you?”

“In his own way, sure,” Beth grinned, leaning in to steal another kiss and shut him up while Toto scampered off of her lap to explore the rest of his new home.

Before they could do anything besides kiss, though, the dog was back and making a leaping bound into Bucky’s lap with a happy bark. Bucky jerked back from Beth in surprise, only just barely catching himself before he instinctually flung the dog away. He recovered from the near-slip-up quickly, and well, though, glaring halfheartedly at Toto as he muttered, “Killjoy.”

Beth grinned, pointing out, “He was your idea.” She reached for Bucky’s flesh hand and held it, running her other hand over the dog’s back as she said, “We’re going to have to buy stuff for him pretty quickly.”

“The shelter had dog food that it sold us – for some outrageous price that Steve claimed was normal these days – so that’s taken care of. What else do you think he needs?”

“Isn’t inflation wonderful?” she muttered with a grin. “But for Toto… bed, leash and collar, a couple of toys, food and water dishes, some treats maybe, etcetera, etcetera.”

“Can you buy that stuff through your online shopping?” he asked, and she caught a wary glint in his eyes.

 _He was afraid of what might happen if she left the Tower,_ Beth realized, and with the thought she already started to feel the beginning of cabin fever. Which was ridiculous, given how big her new “cabin” – i.e., Avengers Tower – was, but still… She was used to almost nonstop _going_ between classes and work and her apartment; it was going to drive her nuts if she was forced to a complete stop.

“Yeah, I could, _but_ …” she drawled, hoping to negotiate a compromise. “What if you and I went out together and got the stuff? We could just find the pet supply store that nearest the Tower and go tomorrow morning maybe.”

Bucky was plainly warring with himself over the idea – he didn’t like it, but she wasn’t likely to be talked out of it – until he muttered unhappily, “Okay, we’ll go in the morning.”

“It’s a date,” Beth grinned, leaning forward to kiss her soulmate over the top of Toto’s head.

 


	11. Cellphones and Cocoa

Steve walked in the door of his and Darcy's suite, already apologizing, "I know you're upset with me, and I'm sorry. I didn't even think to tell you we were leaving –"

"That's because…" Darcy came from their bedroom and plucked his cellphone from his pocket, turning it on before giving it back to him. "This is never on."

Steve looked at her face, feeling her worry and irritation through their bond even if he couldn't see it in her almost-impassive expression. He reached for her hand, feeling its slight tremble as he repeated softly, sincerely, "I'm _sorry,_ Darcy."

Darcy nodded her acceptance of his apology, snuggling his arms as she muttered, "I know. Just… with last night, and all this talk of HYDRA lurking – don't look at me like that, Steve, I'm not stupid or blind – and then you disappeared with Bucky and _blocked me out of our bond_ –"

"But you're back in now," Steve pointed out helpfully before she could get on too much of a roll.

Darcy took a deep breath, calming down as she replied with a pout, "I know, but you scared me."

"Sorry," Steve repeated, kissing her on top of the head.

She pulled back, calmed but curious now, as she asked, "Why did you block me out?"

Steve smiled sheepishly, admitting, "I didn't want you to catch on to what Buck and I were getting for Beth – didn't want to chance you… ruining… the surprise."

Darcy raised an eyebrow suspiciously, half unimpressed and half curious. "What surprise?"

Steve grinned. "Bucky decided to get her a dog."

Her eyebrows climbed higher as she inquired dryly, "Isn't it a little early for them to have a kid?"

Steve shrugged, and Darcy frowned when she felt his thoughts shift.

"What's bugging you?" she asked.

Steve shrugged again, informing her, "There was a second dog there that caught my eye."

"Oh yeah?" Darcy asked with an intrigued smile.

"Yeah, but Bucky reminded me she wouldn't have been a good fit for you and I."

"Why not?" she asked curiously.

Steve grimaced, answering, "She's a Belgian Malinois – a pretty big dog."

Darcy hummed, nodding as she saw where he was going with that train of thought. Then her eyes narrowed as she asked, "Isn't that the breed they use in the army a lot?"

Steve nodded, his smile turning sheepish again as he realized that Darcy had seen straight to what had happened and what he was thinking of doing about it.

"And you found a broken-down war vet in a shelter, didn't you?" Her smile was fond as she declared, "Only you could manage that, Steve Rogers."

"It must be a talent of mine," Steve replied with the charming smile that he knew usually got him whatever he wanted from her.

"Uh-huh." This time she wasn't buying it apparently, because she simply dodged him, pulling out her own cellphone as she headed towards the door.

He grabbed her hand as she walked by, double-checking, "Darce? Are we okay, doll?"

"Yeah, of course," she casually brushed away his concern with a wave of her free hand like it was no big deal now that she knew he was safe.

"Are _you_ okay?"

"Yes, Steve," she smiled gently, though it bordered on tolerantly, at his concern. "You don't have to worry about me. I'm good."

"So am I."

Darcy shook her head just a little bit. "You are arguably the most reckless Avenger there is-"

"I am not! That's Tony!" Steve objected, looking a little affronted, though at least not offended.

"I said 'arguably.' Either way, I'm your soulmate; worrying about you is my job."

Steve raised his eyebrows, waiting for her to realize what she'd just said. When she did, she sighed, and he grinned, mimicking, "' I'm your soulmate; worrying about you is my job.'"

She snorted, lifting her hand from his as she teased, "Go play with your boyfriend, Steve: I have scientists that I have to go check in on."

Darcy could _hear_ the eye-role in his voice as she walked out of the apartment and he called after her, "He's not my boyfriend!"

Grinning, Darcy's head snapped up from her phone with a sudden laugh as she got an idea. "Movie night!" she cheered quietly under her breath before looking back to her phone to locate the television show that she wanted. "Jarvis," she requested as she stepped into the elevator and headed down to the labs. "Invite Beth and Bucky to dinner at mine and Steve's. Something tells me the two of them may not want to be disturbed right this second if that dog went over well."

"As you wish, Miss Lewis," the AI answered, and Darcy grinned as the elevator started downwards.

"Great!"

* * *

"You didn't even _eat_ while you and Steve were out?" Beth repeated in objection later on in the day. "Bucky!"

He shrugged carelessly. "I don't have to worry about that on Steve's account anymore, so, no, we didn't."

"And what about on your account?" she asked with a raised eyebrow, the nursing student in her wanting to say more on the subject. She sighed, deciding, "You know what? Never mind. It doesn't really matter that much. Here, I made you this anyway." She held up a mug of cocoa that was identical to the one she held in her other hand.

"No, thank you." Bucky failed to suppress a shudder as Beth put a mug down in front of him. "I hate that stuff."

Beth blinked, looked down into the mug. "Hot chocolate? Really?"

"Hot…?" he blinked too, cautiously put his flesh hand against the side of the mug. "No. I can't imagine it would taste much better hot."

Beth sank slowly into her own seat, reached out to touch his wrist gently. "Bucky, what did you think it was?"

He got that shuttered look on his face again, the one he always got when thinking about his time as the Asset. "It doesn't matter."

"It does matter, Bucky. Please tell me. Don't shut me out."

He looked up, looked at her, everything that was bright and good in his world, her golden hair tumbling around her face, blue eyes soft and loving. "They didn't feed me solid foods," he said at last. "Not proper meals, like we eat here. Mostly protein powders, ration bars, Army MREs. Always cold. I hadn't tasted hot food in far too many years before I got away from them. That," he nodded at the mug, "looks like the protein shake they gave me most of the time. Gritty and grainy, thick… I always struggled to get it down without gagging."

"Oh, Bucky," Beth whispered, as always fighting to tamp down the fury that came over her when she learned some other little detail of the ghastly things Hydra had done to him. "No. It's hot chocolate. Made with melted chocolate and milk, I don't like the powdery stuff… here." She took a sip of her own, leaned in to kiss Bucky with the warm liquid still in her mouth.

"Mm," Bucky whispered against her lips after a few moments. "I think I could get to like that. Especially your feeding method."

Beth chuckled, squeezed on his wrist lightly. "Wait a moment. I forgot the marshmallows!"

"Miss Jackson? Sergeant Barnes?" Jarvis suddenly spoke up.

"Yes?" Beth asked the air, neither she nor Bucky still sure what to do with the AI's presence.

She grinned, ignoring the way Bucky swallowed an irritated growl at the interruption of whatever idea he'd suddenly gotten – one Beth was quite sure had nothing to do with cocoa or marshmallows – as Jarvis said, "Miss Lewis asked that I invite both of you to her and Captain Rogers' suite for dinner."

Beth looked at Bucky for his opinion on the matter, and he only shrugged, so she replied, "Sure, Jarvis. Tell them we'll be there."

"Yes, Miss Jackson." The AI fell silent again, and Bucky looked at the two mugs of cocoa on

the table.

"Did you say marshmallows?" he asked hopefully, and Beth smiled.

"Yes indeedy. You're in for a treat, Bucky."

"Every moment with you is a treat, angel," he murmured as he watched her bounce off to the kitchen, returning with a handful of the tiny fluffy treats, sprinkling them onto the top of each drink.

"Now, you just let the heat soften them for a minute," she told him, and he grinned, remembering what else he'd been thinking of before Jarvis interrupted them.

"Yeah? I can think of a good way to pass the time," and seizing her around the waist, he dragged her across his lap, bent her back over his arm and kissed her hungrily.

The cocoa was cold by the time they remembered it, and Beth had to throw it out and make fresh.


	12. A Glimpse of the World

**Chapter 12: A Glimpse of the World**

“Here,” Beth grinned as she handed Bucky the fresh cup of cocoa she’d made for him. She folded herself onto the couch beside him, all but in his lap as she said, “Let’s try this again, shall we?” Bucky smiled in kind, accepting the cocoa and stealing a kiss before he took a sip of the drink. “Anything interesting happen besides the dog today?” Beth asked curiously.

Bucky shook his head. “Not really.” He chuckled, admitting, “Maybe I should’ve known better than to take _Steve_ to a dog shelter, though.”

“Why?” Beth’s smile widened as she realized before he could even answer. “He melted at everything in sight, didn’t he?”

Bucky sucked in a breath, admitting a little sheepishly, “’melted at everything in sight’ is more my style, actually, but there was – inevitably, I guess – this _one_ dog. I think he fell in love, poor guy.”

“Meaning Steve or the dog?”

“Steve,” Bucky snorted. “Definitely not the dog.”

“Why not? I thought Steve was practically a yellow lab himself!”

Bucky snorted on a laugh. “Yeah, okay, that’s true. But that dog...” he shook his head. “Was actually a working dog – like Army trained, military dog. I know PTSD, sweetheart, and she has it. I nearly had to drag Steve out of there to get him to leave her behind.”

“I’m surprised he did, in that case. Must be your magic touch,” she teased.

But again Bucky shook his head. “His leaving her behind had more to do with Darcy, I think. She’s a big dog, and on the ride to the shelter, we were talking about it, and Steve mentioned that Darcy doesn’t like big dogs. I just reminded him of that is all.”

Beth sipped thoughtfully at her cocoa before muttering, “I wonder why she doesn’t like them?”

Bucky shrugged. “Steve didn’t say.”

“Maybe I’ll ask her tonight at dinner,” Beth mused.

* * *

“We are watching a TV series!” Darcy declared happily, taking Steve’s elbow as he moved towards the kitchen table with his plate that evening.

“We are?” Beth asked with a raised eyebrow, watching the curious way Steve’s head suddenly dropped, as if he knew what was coming next.

“I’m on a mission,” Darcy informed Beth and Bucky.

 Beth pretended not to notice the way Bucky stiffened at her side, and she didn’t comment on Darcy’s poor choice of words as Steve declared, “Darcy’s decided it’s her job to update me on modern culture, along with everything that’s happened over the past seventy years.

“Of course it is,” Darcy said, chipper – _chipper to the point of being up to something,_ Beth decided. “Isn’t that what soulmates are for?”

“Sure,” Steve drawled. “We’ll go with that.”

“Anyway,” Darcy continued. “It occurred to me that I’d missed a pretty good TGIF series from the nineties when Steve and I were going through all of this.”

“Which one?” Beth asked curiously.

Darcy grinned like she was telling some sort of punchline as she declared, “Boy Meets World.”

“I have seen that show a couple of times,” Steve informed her.

“Yes, but now it _applies_.”

“I… don’t get it,” Beth said.

Steve shook his head to indicate that he didn’t either, so Darcy threaded her arm through his and led the other three into the living room as she explained, “There’s Cory Matthews, the dorky moral compass of everything – the _all-American_ boy.”

“Wait a second here,” Steve began as he started to see where she was going with this.

Beth added, “Hold on, are you saying that-“

Darcy whirled towards her, asking, “Tell us about Shawn!”

“Excuse me?”

“Cory Matthews’ best friend, remember?”

“Very vaguely; it’s been awhile since I’ve seen the show.”

“Well, in that case,” Darcy patted the spaces on either side of her on the couch, and Steve obligingly occupied on while Beth took the other. Bucky folded himself down onto the floor at Beth’s feet as Darcy refreshed their memories. “Shawn is perceived as this rebel child person, Cory’s best friend and a total _player_.”

“Darcy,” Steve objected.

Bucky arched an eyebrow at his best friend’s soulmate, asking in amusement, “Are you trying to tell me something, Darcy?”

“Not at all,” Darcy grinned down at him. “I just think it’s interesting that they’re that way. I think you boys will like the show. It’s laced with a bunch of gay jokes too, so there is that…”

“She is trying to say something, isn’t she?” Bucky asked Steve, still smiling.

“Always. I got stuck with a loudmouth of a soulmate.”

Bucky tilted his head to the side, gaze pointed as he deadpanned, “It must be difficult dealing with a little bit of a ‘loudmouthed’ punk like that, huh?”

Steve smirked as Darcy declared, “They’re actually making a reboot of the series now.”

“I heard about that,” Beth commented. “One of my nieces told me about it, but I haven’t bothered to watch it.”

“All I think you need to know,” Darcy’s grin widened. “Is that in this reboot, it looks like Shawn is going to end up with a pretty blonde waitress.”

Bucky arched an eyebrow, commenting, “Interesting.”

Beth grinned, running a hand through his still-longish hair as Darcy ordered, “Hush, everybody, I’m starting it.”

Steve snapped a sarcastic salute and they all four settled in for the evening’s entertainment. Later, when Darcy started the second episode of the evening, Beth took the opportunity to ask her, “So, what can you tell me about this dog that Steve has, according to Bucky, fallen in love with?”

Darcy shrugged and reiterated everything she knew, most of which Bucky had already told Beth. Then the intern said something surprising. “I was actually thinking about going up tomorrow and taking a look at her myself, just because Steve seems to be so enamored. Who knows… maybe we’ll be getting a dog too.”

“Not by yourself,” Bucky muttered. His eyes never even left the television, and with his head pillowed on Beth’s knees, he was completely relaxed here.

“What do you mean?” Beth asked, although she already had a pretty good idea of what his answer would be.

“It’s not a good idea for you to leave the Tower by yourself yet,” Bucky declared, glancing at Darcy as he added, “Neither of you.”

“Not even together?” Beth queried.

“Besides,” Bucky turned his head just enough to look up into Beth’s eyes. “I thought we were going out tomorrow.”

“The three of us can,” Beth suggested lightly, hoping he wasn’t going to get jealous of her newfound friendship with Darcy. She’d met them both very close to the same time, and it was going to take spending time with both of them to foster the separate relationships. Surely, though, he could understand that. “That way, we get the accompaniment you want us to have, and Darcy can run the errand that she wants – and so can we.”

Bucky swallowed a sigh, asking her, “Is this going to be another one of those things that I can’t manage to talk you out of?” Beth grinned tellingly, until he did sigh, agreeing, “Alright. The three of us can go tomorrow.”

Beth’s grin widened as she leaned over and kissed him, replying, “Thank you, darling.”

Bucky shook his head, though whether it was at her or himself, Beth couldn’t be sure as he replied simply, with a frankness that somehow made it that much sweeter, “I’d do anything for you.”

* * *

“Remind me why we’re here again?” Bucky asked.

He had been out and about most of the morning with Beth and Darcy, and while he didn’t mind the company of the two women, the constant being in public was starting to wear on him. After all, this was only his third day knowing Beth, and, in his eyes at least, she was at risk being out like this.

At Darcy’s request, they’d gone to a coffee shop for breakfast, then to a pet store for things for Toto, and now they were finally back at the dog shelter. Though the question was mostly rhetorical, the sentiment behind it was not. He was ready to go back to the Tower.

 Resiliently unruffled by his mood, Beth wove her fingers through hers as Darcy reminded him, “We’re here because you’re being a wonderful best friend.”

“How?”

“You’re taking care of Steve’s soulmate, aren’t you?” Beth asked him with a smile. “And possibly bringing him a dog?”

“Darcy’s bringing him the dog – maybe,” Bucky corrected. “I brought you a dog, and I got a very nice… reaction for that. Contrary to what Darcy might believe –“ he glanced teasingly towards the brunette. “– I don’t want that same reaction from Steve.”

“Nope,” Darcy grinned right back at him, and Beth shook her head fondly at their banter. In Bucky’s best moments today, the two of them had been verbally sparring the entire morning, and Beth loved it. “But I would be thrilled with it.”

 


	13. Reflection of Terrors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my gosh, you guys, I never had any intention to be away from this story for so long! My inspiration for it is still spotty, but I do have a general plan for the next chapter, too, and a basic outline for the entire story, and I was feeling more into it this weekend, so an actual chapter got finished! Yay for that! Again, sorry for the inhumane hiatus, guys, and I can't promise when the next chapter will come out, but here's this. I hope you enjoy (if you're even still around and putting up with me)!

**Chapter 13: Reflection of Terrors**

“Don’t worry,” Beth requested of her soulmate. “We’ll be leaving and going back… home,” _How strange it still was to think of Avengers’ Tower as “home!” That was probably going to take a while to sink in for both her and Bucky, actually._ “As soon as we’re done looking at the dog here.”

“Unless I decide to bring her home,” Darcy reminded not-so-helpfully. “Then we get to go back to the pet store and do that whole shopping spree all over again!”

Bucky stifled a deep sigh as Beth commented, “We didn’t really have the greatest time management today, did we?”

Darcy shrugged as they walked down the rows of dog cages. “It’s not like you guys have a whole lot of other things you can be doing right now, do you?”

“Actually,” Bucky groused under his breath. “I can think of quite a few things that I’d rather be doing back at the Tower.”

“Is one of them your soulmate?” Darcy asked lightly.

Darcy’s tone was happy enough as she teased him, but as she looked around at the dozens of dogs in the room, Beth noticed her eyes start to flicker about. She was getting nervous, surrounded by something that she didn’t like or trust.

She looked like Bucky had since the beginning of their outing… except Bucky didn’t seem to trust the general populace as a whole, not something as specific as bigger dogs. Beth was just beginning to comprehend how much more he saw as a threat to them all then either of the women did… and she just wasn’t sure how to help him.

Before she could get bogged down with depressing thoughts on that, though, she touched Darcy’s arm, raising an eyebrow and letting her expression silently ask if her new friend was okay.

Darcy nodded, offering a convincing enough smile – just before Bucky declared, “Here she is. Hannah.” Beth looked past Bucky and Darcy to the kennel, and her heart twisted when she noticed the dog crouched in a corner as she eyed them all with obvious wariness. “I don’t think she’s moved at all since Stevie and I were here,” Bucky muttered quietly.

When Beth glanced back at him, concern had darkened his eyes, but she couldn’t tell if it was concern for the dog or uncertainties with the thought of bringing her home. Even now, with Hannah in front of her, Beth could see that it might not even be wise to consider the dog adoptable until she was better… adjusted.

 _But maybe that was the point._ Beth could absolutely believe that Steve had seen exactly that, and been drawn to Hannah _because_ of it. Steve Rogers was a reckless, step-on-the-wire sort of guy, absolutely, but no one could accuse him of not having a heart. If this dog was pulling on Beth’s heartstrings, she had definitely pulled on Steve’s.

Glancing from Bucky to Darcy, Beth saw similar thoughts settling in her eyes, and the brunette sighed, looking wary but determined.

Beth was beginning to get the impression that Darcy wore that expression a lot.

“Okay,” the intern nodded decisively. “Hannah’s coming home with me for Steve. I’m getting Steve a dog.”

“Are you absolutely sure?” Beth asked.

Again, Darcy nodded, and this time her tone was just as firm as the gesture had been as she said, “Yeah, sure. Let’s do this thing.”

So they walked out of the shelter with a large, shaking, “war veteran” of a dog trailing very, very unwillingly behind them. All three humans took turns offering treats and praise just in an attempt to get her into the vehicle that Beth had driven them to the shelter in, but eventually it worked, and they drove to the same pet supply store they had left not long before. This time, Bucky begrudgingly agreed to stay in the car with Hannah while Beth and Darcy went inside to quickly buy the things that Darcy and Steve would need for their new pet.

The two women were working together to wrestle an oversized dog bed down from a top shelf when Beth asked Darcy, “Is it weird if I admit to being curious about why you don’t like dogs? I guess I just don’t… get that.”

Darcy shrugged as they dropped the bed into their cart. “I was – and am – a city girl from the day I was born, in the first place, which sometimes helps nothing. Puppies – cute little babies – I can handle, but puppies do this terrible thing where they become grown dogs. And when I was maybe five or six we had this cranky, scary, gangster guy neighbor, right? Well, this guy had a huge Rottweiler, and one day that dog got out of the neighbor’s yard and came charging into ours where my sisters and I were playing. In their terror, as they ran inside, they forgot about me.”

Beth cringed as she pushed the cart towards the checkout. It wasn’t hard to see where this was going. “Oh, Darcy…”

“’Ouch?’” Darcy suggested with a wry smile.

Beth chuckled under her breath. “Yeah. That.”

Darcy shrugged it off, admitting, “I still have some scars on my side, actually. I was little; in the mess of it all, I broke a couple of my ribs. My mom nearly had a heart attack getting me to the ER.”

“I’d imagine so.”

“And why do you like dogs, then?” Darcy asked, happy to change the subject to something – and someone – else, Beth noted.

“Because we’ve always had them, I guess. I grew up in small-town Kansas, the only girl, with older brothers who were always bringing home strays alongside the usual collection of rodents and reptiles. Furry is much more my style than scaly, you know?”

“Even I can agree with that,” Darcy nodded. “But cats and maybe rabbits are more my speed.”

“Maybe we’ll get a cat next, then?” Beth suggested with a smile as Darcy paid for her things.

“I don’t know how much fur Tony’s going to want around his tech,” Darcy hummed. “Otherwise, I’d be all for it.”

“I’m _mostly_ kidding,” Beth said. “Besides, I think that Bucky’s going to get cranky if we stay out much longer.” Darcy chuckled, but when Beth opened the van door to toss in the purchases, it was Hannah who was – at best – irritated, growling and flashing her teeth.

“I’ll drive,” Darcy “volunteered” quickly, leaving Bucky shotgun and Beth to climb into the backseat and sit beside Hannah.

She shut the door and buckled, waiting until Darcy started driving to carefully hold her hand out to the dog. “Hi, baby,” she whispered, watching as Hannah first retreated, and then slowly craned her head out to sniff at her fingertips. “There’s a good girl, Hannah… good girl!”

Darcy glanced back at them in the rearview mirror, informing Beth, “Between you and Steve, we’re going to have a great team against her, uh, battle scars, aren’t we?”

“Here’s to hoping,” Beth answered, too busy giving her attention to Hannah to notice right away when Bucky said almost under his breath, “I’m pretty sure that’s always been the plan.”

Beth couldn’t decide whether to smile or cry at that remark. It hurt to think that her soulmate identified with the defensive, scared animal half-cowering beside Beth… and it was slightly terrifying for her to think that he already believed she was capable of helping with that – be it with the dog or the human. She was on the road to becoming a nurse, someone who could help with _physical_ problems. The emotional and mental scars borne by both PTSS-stricken vets weren’t something she was as sure of dealing with, not by far. Nevertheless, she chose to smile at least slightly, and when Bucky turned in his seat just enough to reach his hand out to her, she took it and held on tightly.


End file.
